


Songs About Daughters

by homesickblues, StellarRequiem



Series: Songs About Daughters - Main Fic and Accompanying Ficlets [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Unplanned Pregnancy, kastle - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-04-18
Packaged: 2018-05-29 04:30:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 18,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6359392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/homesickblues/pseuds/homesickblues, https://archiveofourown.org/users/StellarRequiem/pseuds/StellarRequiem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has two entirely different minds about this. Before, she hadn’t even given any thought to having a baby. Maybe when she was younger – dreamier – but when her life picked up in the city, she barely had time to spare a thought towards any of that. Her compass never really pointed in one direction. Not even when Frank, quite literally, bulldozed his way into her life. </p><p>But now the concept of “future” and “family” glares back at her from the tiny piece of plastic she just peed on, and she can’t help but bury her head in her hands. </p><p>Because the other mind she has about the scenario is Frank.<br/>__</p><p>Karen discovers she's pregnant, and it changes nothing, and everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Spaghetti Night

_Shit_.

Karen blinks once. Twice.

The two red lines don’t disappear, or somehow magically morph into _one_ red line, like they’re _supposed_ to.

She stares at it in shock, her eyes falling slightly out of focus.

 _SHIT_.

It had all started about a month beforehand. Little things… things that she easily overlooked as stress or a weird cycle or even indigestion. Her breasts hurt… they felt heavier, but they sometimes did that depending on what time of the month it was. She felt sick after eating sometimes, but she’d written it off as some sort of stomach bug. But it wasn’t until she realized that she was two weeks late and aching all over before she decided to “ease her mind” and take a damned pregnancy test.

Because _of course_ she wasn’t pregnant, she’d thought. How could she be? “Protection” was Frank’s middle name. And she wasn’t some airhead who’d let him forget. She had a memory of steel. She never missed a pill.

Frank didn’t either.

“ _Did you take your pill today?_ ” he’d ask and she’d laugh and roll her eyes because _of course, I’m not an idiot_.

And yet – there it is. Those two, tiny pink lines, standing out very clearly against the white background in the little view window.

She has two entirely different minds about this. Before, she hadn’t even given any thought to having a baby. Maybe when she was younger – dreamier – but when her life picked up in the city, she barely had time to spare a thought towards any of that. Her compass never really pointed in one direction. Not even when Frank, quite literally, bulldozed his way into her life.

But now the concept of “future” and “family” glares back at her from the tiny piece of plastic she just peed on, and she can’t help but bury her head in her hands.

Because the other mind she has about the scenario is Frank.

She imagines every single possibility for his reaction and none of them are good.

She imagines him worried that having a new baby will be like replacing his old kids, and erasing them somehow.

She imagines him panicking that he won’t be any good as a parent now. He’s done too much, seen too much…

She imagines him thinking that having a new baby means eventually _losing_ a new baby, because he won’t be able to shake the idea from his mind that something will happen like before and he won’t be able to stop it.

And then… and then she imagines him leaving her. The thought makes her fling the pregnancy test across the room and stand up, struggling to keep her balance through the sudden wave of nausea she gets, the way her vision blurs.

After she empties the contents of her stomach in the toilet (which doesn’t make her feel better, but makes her feel like she’s suffering from the worst kind of sea-sickness _with_ an empty stomach), she sits down and strategizes.

 _There has to be a way to do this without ruining everything_ , she thinks.

She opens a blank document on her computer with the intention of listing out ideas, but it just reminds her too much of work and deadlines and ends with her fingers curled in her hair and her forehead resting against the cool wood of her desk. So instead she grabs a notebook and jots down some options there, crossing several out before circling one word: spaghetti.

So, she heads to the grocery store down the block. When Rajish asks her if she feels alright, because she’s looking a little clammy, she just nods and smiles and helps him bag up all the cans of crushed tomatoes and boxes of pasta. She snatches a couple more tests as well, just in case.

Oddly, spaghetti is Frank’s favorite. Between massive mouthfuls of it the first time she made it for him, he muttered something about how it reminded him of his Grandma’s. Tonight, she thinks, is definitely a spaghetti night.

As she boils the noodles, she considers whether or not she should feel bad for buttering him up like this, but she needs some leverage. She needs him to be happy, to be relaxed, to be in a state of mind where she can bring it up and he won’t blow up.

She browns the sausage and the peppers for the sauce, trying desperately to think of a way to phrase it.

 _I’m pregnant_.

 _So… don’t freak out… I’m pregnant_.

 _So it turns out that I’m pregnant_ …

_I’m having a baby._

We’re _having a baby._

She slices her finger while trying to dice garlic and sticks it in her mouth to stop the bleeding, like she’s done since she was a toddler, but suddenly the iron-bitter taste of blood overpowers her and leads her to sprinting to the bathroom and vomiting again. She hopes desperately as she brushes her teeth for the third time that day that she can keep dinner down. Puking her guts out while trying to breech the subject with Frank doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun.

She takes both of the other tests while the sauce simmers. The two little pink lines appear on both. The last one even seems a little darker than the others as if to say, _get over it, sweetheart, you’re knocked up._

When Frank gets home he’s tired. She doesn’t ask what he’s been doing all evening – she never does – and he doesn’t tell her. He simply slips into the kitchen smelling like gunsmoke and coffee and slides his hands around her waist, bending over so he can bury his face in the crook of her neck. She reaches up and cards her fingers through his hair in greeting, turning to brush her lips against his temple.

“How’d you know I was craving spaghetti? You psychic or something?” he mutters against her skin and she can feel the vibration of it all the way down her spine.

“I might be,” she musters a smile and allows him to brush the hair back from her face and nip at her earlobe before walking off to shower.

When he returns, she has dinner on the table. After she dishes them both up, he scoots his chair closer to hers so he can hook one of his socked feet under hers while he shovels pasta into his mouth, only stopping to ask her about her day.

 _Not yet_ , she tells herself _, give him more time to relax_.

“It was fine,” she twirls some pasta around with her fork absently. He gives her an amused look.

“Not hungry?”

“Not really.”

She notices him glancing over at her every so often with a look somewhere in between concern and confusion. She’s never been a very good actress, when it comes down to it. She can feel herself shaking with the anxiety of it all and Frank catches her several times staring off at the wall adjacent to them, her brow furrowed and her lips pulled into a tight line.

“You feeling okay?” he says, quirking an eyebrow.

“Yes,” she says quickly, feeling the unspoken words trying to break past her lips as she does so. She bites at her lower lip and holds them back with all her might.

They eat in silence for a few more moments and Karen feels like she’s drowning. It’s too much.

_No, not yet._

She bites her lip.

_I can’t keep this from him. I can’t hold it in any longer. Dammit._

She sets down her fork and puts her hands over her mouth, feeling tears well in her eyes. Frank looks up, startled in his way, with his jaw clenching and his eyes narrowing in confusion.

“Ka-”

“I’m pregnant, Frank.” She looks into his eyes, her hands still clamped over her mouth, and waits for something, _anything_.

***

It’s pathetic how fast he goes to pieces. Breaks up completely, going rigid in his chair, his mind screaming so many things at once that all he hears is static. And then, there she is: his girl. His Lisa. Dead in his arms. He can’t remember what she looked like the first time he held her, in that hospital, past the more recent memory of the blood and meat that had been where her face once was. And he can’t imagine. Can’t picture holding another baby, maybe with her mama’s bright eyes. Can’t conceive of doing it again when he has no right, when his first baby girl, his first baby boy, are still dying in front of him every time he closes his eyes.

Karen is watching him.

“Frank,” she says, so close to a whisper, trying not to break him. _Too fuckin late . . ._ “Frank? Please, say something.”

He shakes his head. She reaches for his arm and he jolts. Jerks his whole chair back, knocking his ankle against hers under the table. Stepping on her toes. The chair scrapes across the linoleum with an ugly, groaning screech.

“I can’t,” he chokes, and then he’s muffling his own words with his hand over his mouth, “I can’t do it. Fuck, I can’t—”

And she’s out of her chair. She’s out of her chair and she’s coming after him, chasing him down when he tries to run from her, like always—making him better when he doesn’t know how. Karen takes hold of his temples in her soft, pale hands and pulls him forward in his chair, laying his head against her stomach, just below her breastbone. He breathes the cotton and detergent smell of her blouse. The floral of her perfume. She presses her lips into his hair.

“It’s ok,” she says.

“No,” he chokes, again, the word muffled by her body.

“Yes,” she says, “it will be. We’ll . . . figure it out.”

By which she means she won’t be doing this alone. She means, if he can’t get his shit together, she won’t be doing it at all. Maybe that should relieve him. Instead, he has to excuse himself, lock the bathroom door, lean over the sink, splash cold water in his face, and try not to vomit.

When he reemerges she’s in bed, pretending she hasn’t been crying.


	2. Snap Decisions

 

As Karen watches the reflections of traffic lights in the windows of the office building across from her apartment, she thinks back to when she was a little girl in foggy Vermont and her mother lost a baby brother.

It happened when she was so small she can barely remember it. She remembers waking up in the middle of the night to screams, followed by sobs, followed by hurried footsteps and loud phone calls to their obstetrician.

She remembers wandering out of her room to find her mother sitting in a pool of blood, clutching a 6-month old fetus in her arms. She only was able to catch a glimpse of this before she was herded out of the room by her nanny, her face pressed into the linens of her nightgown, her hair stroked down in a comforting manner even though she barely understood what was happening.

She sometimes thinks about what her life would be like if she had that baby brother, and if her other brother was still alive. Someone she could call in the middle of the night, someone she could tell everything to and not worry about judgement or overreaction. Maybe they’d live in the city with her… maybe they’d be back in Vermont. Maybe they’d be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a senator.

Karen sits and pulls her hair up into a messy bun, changing into her old ratty Giants t-shirt and shorts. She sits on the edge of the bed facing the window and runs a hand down over her still-flat stomach absently, her sore eyes welling with tears she didn’t know she even had left.

She worked in the Nelson & Murdock office long enough to see all kinds of horrifying lawsuits of underprivileged girls who were raped by various authority figures – or even family members – and had to sue for child support. Or for money for an abortion. Those girls were never in the position to have a child. It was forced on them.

Sure, she still eats ramen out of the Styrofoam cup three times a week, but there’s _room._

There’s room in her life for this.

She realizes then, eyes out of focus and stinging from tears, that if she terminated this pregnancy she’d spend the rest of her life wondering what her baby would have grown up to be, grown up to do.

The surge of maternal love isn’t one she’s familiar with at all, but it settles in her stomach like some kind of protective shell.

_I’ve done everything by myself since I was eighteen. This isn’t different._

She feels the bed shift and creak. Frank doesn’t touch her, doesn’t even move to touch her. She stays perfectly still, watching as red and blue lights whiz by outside, the siren making her ears ring.

“I don’t think-” she stops, clearing her throat, her voice hoarse and weak, “Frank, I don’t want to get rid of it.”

She turns to him, legs crossed, arms folded over her stomach. He looks pale and a bit green around the edges, his hair sticking up in odd places with severely dark bags under his eyes. She has the urge to reach out and touch him, pull him to her, but she can’t remove her hands from her sides.

He’s silent for a long time. Long enough that Karen has to take a deep breath to calm herself and close her eyes.

“I understand. I get what you’re going through. I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do.” She doesn’t look at him. Instead, she turns back to the window. “But I want this baby. I can’t explain it… I can’t explain why. It’s not something I actively _wanted_ … or even _thought_ about. But now that it’s happened… now that it’s _happening_ …” She closes her eyes.

And I can do this on my own, if need be. I won’t blame you. I won’t hate you. I could never hate you. I just… I just…” She tries to breathe in and finds she can’t, really. Her lungs are tight and her throat feels like it’s closing up. She buries her face in her hands and focuses on regaining her breath.

Frank’s eerily still next to her.

“I’m not one of those pieces of shit that knocks a girl up and walks out,” he says in a dangerously quiet voice.

“I’m not saying you are,” she snaps. “I’m giving you a choice.”

She holds back the sob building under her diaphragm. Now’s not the time to seem weak.

She just wish she could read his mind, figure out _what he wants_.

***

“I’m not asking for a choice. You’re decided. That’s good enough for me.”

“Frank—”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he presses. The words come out too hard, harder than she deserves. He tries to quiet it as he adds “I got you.”

She shakes her head. The light from the city pours through the window, framing the curve of her cheek. She looks like an angel, all righteous and soft.

“But do you _want_ this?”

Of course he doesn’t.

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” he tells her. “Like I said: I got you.”

She bites her lip. Won’t look at him. Like she can’t stand to look at him—like she thinks he’s lying. Which he’s promised her he’d never do. And he can’t stand it.

“I need some air,” he says. She doesn’t fight him when he goes.

He makes his escape to the roof, and he’s gasping by the time he gets there. Because of course he doesn’t want this. He’s had this. He’s done this. He’s _lost_ this. He’s _ruined_ this. And he wants no part of it. He doesn’t want bedtime stories and so much love his heart bursts. He doesn’t want first words and laughs and steps in his direction. He’s still reciting _one batch, two batch_ down the barrel of a gun—he’s in no state for a lullaby. For _You are my Sunshine_ and _Brown Eyed Girl._ He can’t remember those things, anymore, doesn’t know how to feel that much, and he doesn’t deserve to re-learn it.

He sits down on the edge of the roof with his face in his hands and tries to breathe his way through the unimaginable—the weight of all the things he shouldn’t have and can’t carry. _Daddy._ He can still hear it in their voices. One of the few things he hasn’t recorded over without meaning to. One of the things he never will.

When he comes back to Karen, she doesn’t look at him. She’s lying down, facing the window. He can tell she isn’t asleep. He crawls into bed beside her, bringing his mouth as close to her ear as he dares and placing a hand on her shoulder.

“I don’t want to be a father,” he says, his voice breaking just to spite him, “but I’m not losing you. Can you live with that?”

She rolls over to face him.

“If you can,” she says, something almost like skepticism in her eyes, only sadder. She pulls her head far enough off the pillow to kiss the corner of his jaw, and then rolls over again. Away from him. He doesn’t touch her again.


	3. Scared Sensible

It’s Sunday and the weather is just starting to turn chilly, the windows fogging up a bit when she pumps up the heater.

It’s been a month and the nausea has gotten worse but she’s gotten used to it. She’s learned to eat mostly mild, cardboard-like foods and a lot of water. She pushes a cheerio around the bowl with a spoon, hearing Frank behind her in the bedroom getting dressed. The sound of him never fails to send a chill of relief down her spine. She keeps expecting she’s going to find him gone, like there was never any trace of him to begin with except for what’s growing inside of her.

As if on cue, a reminder that the universe isn’t _actually_ on her side, she lurches forward, feeling like she’s been shot right through her lower abdomen.

She thinks that maybe she has been, the pain is so intense. But when she looks down, there’s no blood. No guts. She hadn’t even noticed she made a noise until Frank comes stumbling into the room, eyes wide and alert, a pistol clutched in his right hand.

In a second she’s out of her chair, leaning forward to grip at the table with one hand and her stomach with the other, and all she can think is: _no, no, no, no, no…_

“What? _What_?” Frank puts his hands on her shoulders and wheels her around to face him.

“Something’s… wrong…” she says through gritted teeth.

And then there’s another bullet – another surge of pain that pierces through her like white hot lightning. She wails and her kneels buckle. Frank, with a trained military efficiency, catches her and scoops her up bridal style, snatching her purse and car keys off the kitchen table and rushing her out to her car.

Karen curls her fingers into the cotton grey shirt he’s wearing, trying (and failing, for the most part) to hold back the panicked sobs trying to thrash their way through up through her esophagus. Every time she closes her eyes she sees her mother holding her dead baby brother. She sees the blood, hears the way her mother cried like it was the end of the world.

Once they’re in the car, she yanks out her phone and calls Foggy (after struggling to find his number with shaking hands). Frank doesn’t say anything.

When he answers, he sounds busy. Maybe like he’s in the middle of a case or a meeting or something.

“Karen? Where have you _been_? Matt’s been… no, now’s not a good time.”

“Foggy,” she gasps, “I need you to drive to Metro General right now…”

“What? Is something… what’s going on?”

“I can’t explain right now. But I will. Just… please, Foggy.”

As she listens to the stunned silence on the other line, she curses the million times she _almost_ told him, told Matt, but didn’t. She was scared of their judgement. It’s stupid, she realizes. She’s _not_ ashamed… especially not of what Matt thinks. But here they are, the truth rearing its inconvenient, ugly head…

“Okay,” he says finally. “Okay… _Jesus, Karen…_ okay, I’m coming. See you soon,”

She hangs up and tosses her phone in her purse.

“I’ll have Foggy text you,” she promises, even though she can’t _technically_ promise that Foggy will do anything of the sort.

Frank grunts in return, his eyes fixed to the road. He’s pale, and his leg is bouncing in a nervous way, jittering around and making the car shake a bit. She wonders vaguely if he’s fearful of losing her, or if maybe he’s fearful of losing more than _just_ her.

 _Dammit_ , she thinks. She doesn’t want to be responsible for Frank losing another child. Even if it’s a child he doesn’t want right now. Their whole situation has been hazy and unclear ever since they had the initial conversation ( _how can he stay with me and not be a father to the baby? What will he be, the estranged uncle?_ ) but now it seems so much worse.

Frank’s nightmare is coming true.

 _No thanks to her_.

The pain’s coming in waves now, slightly less than the initial sucker punch she experienced, but worse than _any_ menstrual cramps she ever imagined in her life.

 _I’m not losing you now_ , she can’t help but think pointedly down at her stomach, _not now, not ever._

Foggy’s waiting when they pull up to the drop-off/pick-up line. Karen opens the car and gets out but it’s too late – Foggy sees Frank in the driver’s seat and pales ten shades, stumbling backwards.

“Ka- _Karen_ … is that the—holy shit, is that who I think it is…?”

“I can explain. _Later_. But I need to get inside _right now_ or I’m going to _strangle you_.”

“Get her a wheelchair, Nelson.” Frank says from inside the car, his voice hard and low as if to say _I’m not fucking around_.

“I… I should call…”

“FOGGY!” Karen places her hands on her shoulders, “ _Please_.”

Foggy looks into her eyes and then past her at Frank and seems to silently resign.

He jogs over to the entrance of the hospital and returns with a wheelchair, which Karen gratefully sits in.

“It’ll be okay,” she says to Frank through the rolled-down window.

His eyes are swimming with something she can’t quite put her finger on. He reaches over and takes the fingers she has outstretched to him, brushing his course thumb over her knuckles before pressing a kiss there.

Foggy yanks her away from him “accidentally” and wheels her into the hospital a little too fast. She gasps when they go over the curb, doubling over. She can hear a car door open behind her.

“Don’t,” she calls, “I’m okay.”

The car door closes again, and the engine starts. She sighs in relief.

“And what’s brought you in today?” the nurse at the front desk says in a syrup-sweet voice.

“I think I’m having a miscarriage,” Karen says, her voice hiccupping through the pain.

She sees Foggy almost faint in her periphery.

“Right this way.” The nurse stands and leads her and Foggy back to an open room. “And you must be the father?”

“Yes,” Karen nods, not bothering to look at a very silent, very stiff Foggy.

“Well, Dad, you can wait out in the waiting room. We’ll let you know when you can come in or if we have any news.”

Foggy nods once and gives Karen a narrow-eyed “ _you’re going to tell me everything or else”_ look before leaving.

Karen buries her head in her hands.

 

 

Two hours later, and she has a ruptured ovarian cyst.

They give her oral medication and wait for it to kick in before doing an ultrasound to check on the baby.

She really can’t make out any sort of human lifeform in the blue blurry lines on the screen, but just the knowledge that her baby is _there_ is enough.

They find a beating heart. That’s good enough for her.

She pulls out her phone to take a picture, just for a keepsake, and finds it’s dead. She sighs, hoping Frank hasn’t done anything too crazy to take the edge off of his worry.

The first five moments of Foggy driving her home are silent. Finally, as if something possesses him, he turns to her with a severe look and says:

“You know, I worry about Matt day in and day out. Out there beating up bad guys and immortal ninjas or whatever, and meanwhile you’ve been nailing the _Punisher_!?”

He sounds utterly flabbergasted and Karen can’t help but laugh. He shoots daggers at her.

“I’ll tell you the whole story sometime soon,” she says. “You and Matt. I owe you that much.”

“Yes, I’d say so. _Jesus Christ, Karen_ … He still kills people! Like, every night on the news…”

“Let’s not, right now, okay? Later. I promise.”

He shuts up after that. Drops her off, even hugs her and mumbles something about being “there for her and the Punisher’s offspring” before she gets out of the car and heads up the stairs.

When she reaches her door, it’s unlocked. She finds Frank in the kitchen, his hand plastered over his mouth and his eyes narrowed in thought. He has deep worry circles under his eyes. He’s pacing, back and forth, but stops dead when he sees her, eyes wide and unblinking.

“So, um, I’m still pregnant,” she offers a small smile before looking down at the floor, not wanting to see if there’s any sort of disappointment written on his face. “I’m fine… I have a rupt-”

In two large, swift strides Frank is with her, scooping her up into his arms and hugging her impossibly close, face buried in the crook of her neck, hands splayed against her back, holding her to him. Her lips fall open in shock and she carefully wraps her arms around his neck, stroking the hair at the base of his skull.

He pulls back suddenly, taking her face in both of his hands, resting his forehead against hers, eyes searching.

“You tell that kiddo of yours not to scare their daddy like that again,” he says softly, looking on the verge of tears.

Karen can’t even speak— _their daddy—_ and she doesn’t have to. In the next second he’s kissing her, her face still cradled in his hands.


	4. Meet and Greet

Frank watches her undress from the bed. It’s six in the morning, and she’s bathed in the yellow light of the vanity, preparing to shower in the half-dark for his sake. She shouldn’t bother. He’s been home for all of an hour and he’s still too fucking wired to sleep.  He sits up in bed and watches her with an arm slung across his bent knee as she shakes loose her hair and peels her way out of her shirt, exposing the curve of her breasts and her back to the caress of the light behind her. It frames her, surrounds her dark silhouette with warm color that highlights the shape of her body. She turns a little sideways, and it captures something he’s never noticed before—a roundness to her stomach. Petite Karen’s ever-flat stomach.

He’s out of bed before he knows what he’s doing.

“Frank?” she begins, stopping herself as his hand comes to rest below her breastbone.  He runs his knuckles down to her navel, following the curve, trying to make sense of what it means. How _real_ it is, right there in front of him as if to remind him, once and for all, what he’s gotten himself into. What he’s unintentionally accepted.

He sinks to his knees in front of her, placing both of his hands on the subtle bump in her smooth figure. He can feel her looking at him, half-notices her fingers running through his hair, but he can’t look back. He’s too busy trying to see through her skin to the promise beneath. To the _baby,_ his baby. _Their baby._ So _real_ under his palms. It won’t be long before he’ll be able to hold Karen like this and feel it kick.

His eyes start to sting, and he refocuses long enough to realize that he’s smiling so hard his face hurts. How he’s managed any expression other than awe is a mystery, but here he is, shaking, about ready to start blubbering, and still smiling.

“Hey there,” he says, leaning forward to whisper the words against her stomach.


	5. Not Quite Bribery

It’s actually Frank’s idea.

They’re sprawled out on the bed one day as the rain outside starts to turn to cold slush showering down against the window, making the window pane creak unhappily. She’s quietly arguing with herself about pros and cons of various pieces of natal furniture with him silent and amused beside her when he turns his head and asks, “So how do we bribe Nelson to keep pretending he’s the father?”

“We don’t have to _bribe_ him… Foggy’s… _Foggy_.”

Frank raises a skeptical eyebrow, probably conjuring up an image of Foggy’s horror-struck face at the hospital, and Karen sighs.

“I’ll talk him into it,” she says after a moment of quiet contemplation, closing her laptop and moving so the top half of her body is draped over Frank’s broad chest. “No bribery necessary.”

And so that’s how she winds up inviting Foggy over for dinner.

She doesn’t mention Frank, thinking that would be the deal breaker of all deal breakers, but Foggy’s not an idiot. When he walks into her apartment he presses himself against the wall, his mouth pressed into a firm line, his eyes scanning Frank up and down and then darting to the window. Obviously her tactics of making the entire apartment smell like chicken parm (Foggy’s favorite food) and chocolate cake (Foggy’s favorite dessert), as well as the bottle of Foggy’s favorite wine sitting out on the kitchen table, don’t faze him. He glances at her suspiciously before looking back at Frank like he’s some kind of feral animal.

“Foggy,” Karen clears her throat before going and grabbing him, steering him toward the couch, “he’s not going to bite.”

“Not exactly his mouth I’m worried about,” Foggy mumbles. “Although I don’t know, he could kill me with his mouth, probably…”

Frank has the most amused, smug look on his face that Karen has to look away before his smile becomes contagious. Foggy narrows his eyes, unamused.

“I know why you wanted me to come over… and I want you to know that I think you’re _insane_ …”

“Foggy, everyone at the hospital already thinks you’re the father. And Frank can’t come in with me… for obvious reasons. I need you to do this for me. Please. I will owe you forever. I will get you coffee every morning for ten years…”

Foggy stays resolutely silent.

“ _Please_ ,” she repeats. Frank kicks off the wall and stalks forward.

“What’s it gonna take?” He plops into the chair across from them, hitching his legs up on the coffee table.

Foggy visibly flinches.

“Okay, god, I’ll do it.” He turns to Karen. “But only because I care about you and you’re my friend and _definitely not_ because I think the father of your baby might rip my limbs off if I don’t.”

Karen beams and hitches forward, wrapping her arms around him and squeezing. “Thank you, thank you, thank you…”She pecks his cheek.

He sighs and returns the hug, patting her back a bit awkwardly. “Although I don’t know why you aren’t making Matt do this… I mean you two were practically-”

Karen winces. Frank leans forward, his eyebrows raised, amused. Foggy blanches, his mouth falling open.

“Wait… _wait_ … Matt _doesn’t know_?!” His skin blotches up with redness and he takes a deep breath, tugging at his hair. “Well I’m not telling him, Karen. Nope. Not a _chance_... but you can’t just… _keep_ this from him…!”

“The Devil’s got some bad karma when it comes to keeping his own secrets, or so I hear,” Frank comments, chewing absently on a toothpick, leaning back with his arms folded behind his head.

Foggy’s mouth falls even more agape.

“You _know_ about Matt!? Karen, tell me you didn’t…”

“He figured it out on his own.” Karen rolls her eyes, the sigh that escapes her mouth a little more forceful than she means it to be. “Matt will find out when he finds out. I’m not worried about it right now. But I am worried about having someone come with me to the hospital if something goes wrong or when I go into labor.” She reaches over and scoops up Foggy’s hand, looking into his eyes.

“I already said I’d do it. But I feel _really weird_ about the fact that Matt doesn’t know. Matt knows _everything_. He’s going to be so pissed. And… _oh god_ , what if he thinks I really did impregnate you? That’s like… the first rule of guy-code, Karen! I can’t be the guy who knocked up his ex! I’m his best friend! He’ll murder me.” He glances around and shudders. “In fact, he’s probably going to swoop in the window any second now and murder all of us…”

“Hah,” Frank snorts, “Right. I’m sure he’d _murder you_ , Mr. Make Love Not War...”

“Point being,” Foggy continues with a wary glare at Frank, “you have to tell him, Karen.”

“Stop worrying about Matt. Matt’s an adult, and so am I. And so are you. This isn’t middle school. I don’t have to tell him everything.” Karen stands and walks to the kitchen. Frank’s behind her in an instant, fingers grazing the small of her back.

“You sure we can trust this guy?” he whispers into her ear and she waves him off.

“Of course. We’ve been through a lot together.”

“He’s gonna tell your other friend. The one with the horns.”

Karen shrugs.

“I don’t care what Matt thinks.”

Frank chuckles quietly as she turns off the oven. She turns to him and pokes him in the chest, eyebrow quirked defiantly.

“You be nice.” She leans up and presses a kiss to his jaw before glancing pointedly out into the living room where Foggy’s opening the bottle of wine and pouring himself a practically overflowing glass. “He defended you in court. You owe him at least that.”

Frank lefts out a puff of air and looks to the side, but he smiles.

“Yes, ma’am.”


	6. Good Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Either before or after you read this chapter (before if prefer things chronologically) I strongly recommend reading this excellent little dose of Foggy that Ophiliad/Homesickblues created! http://archiveofourown.org/works/6388003

The devil takes another week to catch on. When he does, he chooses to deal with it by interrupting Frank while he’s working. He hears the soft thud as he hits the ground behind him.

“Red,” Frank says.

“We need to talk,” he replies, grumbling.

“We really don’t. You here for something worthwhile, or just to fuck with me?”

Frank doesn’t glance up from the scope he’s checking, but he hears the devil shift behind him, coming around to his left. He takes up a position at the edge of the rooftop, staring down into the same warehouse that Frank intends to fill with lead.

“Some of Fisk’s people are in there,” the devil mutters. “I need a word.”

“Well, Frank snorts, “better hurry, then. They won’t be talking long.”

The devil’s head snaps in his direction.

“More killing? With what’s happening to Karen?”

“ _Because_ of the baby, yeah. These assholes have been looking into shit they shouldn’t,” Wesley, Karen had said his name was, in the same breath that she’d told him that no one—including the devil—knew what she’d done, “some of it leads to your old office.”

“So you’re just going to kill them all.”

“Yep.”

“You’re twisted,” the devil says, pivoting in his direction, digging a heel in to brace himself.

“If you’re winding up to try and kick my head off again, don’t. Your boys there,” he jerks his head toward the warehouse, “don’t meet for longer than a few minutes at a time. If you want something from them, you’d better get down there. I’ll give you five minutes to beat the shit out of ‘em, ask your questions . . . whatever it is you do before I start shooting.”

The devil glances at the warehouse again, already thin mouth pressed into an all but invisible line as he fumes. Frank shrugs, refocusing on his rifle.

“Clock’s ticking.”

The devil takes off like a shot.

Frank checks over the scope again, just for good measure.

The devil sneaks his way inside.

Frank checks his watch, and starts assembling. There’s something cathartic about just putting a gun like this together—watching it turn into something long and lethal. He doesn’t prefer sniper rifles. They take a lot of set-up, a lot of time. They’re slow, by his standards. But putting them together—that he enjoys.

The devil takes out his first man from behind. There are 14 in the room.

Frank lines up the scope and waits.

The Devil makes his way through the warehouse, brawling and kicking and dodging bullets. That shit, Frank has always thought, is eerie. Weirder by far than the blind fighter concept alone. _The shit he hears coming_. Frank wonders if he can hear _him_ from this distance, slowing his breathing as he lines up a shot.

The devil kicks his target in the throat.

He picks a different one.

The devil picks that one off, too, moving toward the man he wants. He pins him to the wall in a chokehold, tossing something at another man that hits him squarely in the face, leaving only one other stumbling around behind him. With a gun. As he lifts it, the devil wheels around.

“Alter boy,” Frank mutters, not for the first time, and he presses down on the trigger.

The gun-wielder drops. He lets the devil twist the other guy’s fingers long enough to get him talking before he shoots him, too.

 

 

When the devil returns to the roof, he’s pissed. Frank sighs, standing. The rifle is packed up already, and he means to finish the devil’s groaning leftovers at close range. Assuming Murdoch ever leaves him alone.

“That wasn’t five minutes,” he snaps. Frank shrugs.

“Your ass needed covering.”

“I had it handled. You didn’t have to kill anyone.”

“Save it, Red.”

“And this is the father of Karen’s baby. You think you can be a parent and do this?”

“I _think_ , Red, that you don’t know shit about being a parent. And you don’t know shit about Karen. And you really gotta stop acting like you know shit about me.”

“Is that a threat?” The devil snarls.

“It’s a warning.”

“Karen won’t be happy with either of us if we do this.”

Frank snorts. Looks askance, searching the horizon for a reason not to break the devil’s shin.

“Do what?” he scoffs. “I’ve got no problem breaking your teeth, Red. Doesn’t mean I don’t have better things to do.” He’s got Karen at home, waiting for him in bed. Probably in need for a foot rub. They’ve been swelling.

“You can’t keep this crap up,” the devil presses, “for Karen’s sake. Promise me you’ll stop.”

“I don’t owe you shit. What I do or do not keep doing is between Karen and me.”

“I’ll make you stop.”

Frank laughs.

“Red, I’d love to see you try.”

The devil reaches for his billy club. Frank swings for his face, and knees him in the stomach when he blocks it. He doesn’t have time for this.

The devil does, of course, get a few hits in before Frank manages to pin him halfway over the edge of the roof, and his busted nose bleeds down onto the devil’s helmet as he speaks.

“Stay the fuck out of our lives, Murdock,” he warns, and leaves the devil to scramble back to his feet. He doesn’t follow Frank home.

When he gives Karen her foot-rub, he does so under a chastising gaze, with a tissue crammed up his nose.

 


	7. Image on a Screen

At five months, Karen can no longer hide the bump. She can still see her feet, but not as easily anymore. On her petite frame, everything is so _obvious_ … she feels just generally _heavier_ in every possibly way. She’s had to buy much more supportive bras and stretchier clothes, but it was all worth it for the first time she felt the baby kick.

It was gentle at first – barely a twitch, and it felt like a hiccup pressing up against her diaphragm. But then it happened again, and when she reached down to run a soothing hand over her protruding stomach, she felt it. A tiny foot, maybe, or a hand. Nudging back at her as if to say, _hey, still here_.  

Her first reaction was shock. It’s one thing to have a baby growing inside of you – it’s another thing entirely to _feel_ that baby. To _recognize_ that there is, indeed, another living being inside of you, sucking up nutrients and DNA.

When she told Frank, he had made her lie down immediately so he could rest his cheek against her stomach, his eyes closed with a stupid grin plastered over his face, feeling every tiny movement.

_“Hi peanut, nice to meet you_ ,” he’d said and it had made her cry as she stroked his hair.

When he looked up at her there were tears in his eyes and it was one of the first moments she thought about her, Frank, and the little alien growing inside of her uterus as a _family_.

When she goes to get her next ultrasound, the one where they’re really supposed to be able to clearly make out a tiny human in the images, she misses him. Foggy plays his part well, charming every nurse or doctor they come across and keeping a protective arm around Karen while still giving her a respectful distance. No one senses anything wrong.

“I’ve only ever seen this happen in the movies,” Foggy comments as the nurse smears a freezing cold jelly-like material all over her abdomen.

The nurse chuckles and looks up at him.

“Excited to be a dad?”

“Oh, completely.” Foggy nods and grins, his eyes darting to Karen before landing back on the nurse. “Always wanted a son to, y’know, toss the ol’ pigskin around with.”

“So you _do_ want to find out gender? It is 20 weeks… we will be able to see.”

“No,” Karen says quickly, “No… we want to keep it a surprise. Don’t we, sweetheart?” She shoots a week glare in Foggy’s direction.

“Of course! Just wishful thinking. A girl’d be good too. Daddy’s little princess.” He smiles but it looks like a wince, and Karen almost laughs trying to imagine Foggy doing any sort of parenting.

“Okay,” the nurse says as she turns on the imagining machine. “Try to relax,” she says to Karen.

Karen nods before shoving her phone at Foggy.

“Take pictures of _everything_ and send them to my _brother_ , okay? Like we talked about?”

“Of course, sunshine.” Foggy grits his jaw but takes the phone.

Karen leans back and takes a deep breath. She can’t help but smile when the screen flickers on and she can see tiny feet.

 

*

 

His phone rings. Once. Twice. There are only two people who ever text him, and one of those only does so to reply. To let him know when his supplies are in. Lately, he’s needed fewer of those. Which means that this ringing is Karen.

He snaps his phone from the table. _Two new messages._ He opens the first. _Multimedia (downloading)._

Frank sets the phone down.

He knows what that picture is. What he’ll see if he opens it. A gray-blue, frozen image where there should be something moving, changing angles and the shifting of limbs. He knows the pictures she sends of the ultrasound won't _look_ like anything. They'll just be the shapes of feet and skull and maybe distinguishable limbs and it will all be shapeless and shadowy, nothing like what he remembers—nothing like clinging to Maria’s hand, agape, staring into an unclear image on a blocky old screen feeling like what he was seeing was not only something alive, but miraculous. These pictures won’t capture that. These still frames will feel foreign and unreal, staring back at him from a handheld screen, interrupted by her incoming messages; more disenchanting pictures of something that only feels tangible when she’s with him.

He lets his phone buzz and ring away, message after message over the next several minutes, without touching it. He pockets it when the ringing stops.

 

When Karen gets home, she’s elated. She’s radiant. She hurries up to him and throws her arms around his neck, and he lets his head fall into her shoulder. Clutching her against his chest, he presses his face into her neck, inhaling the conflicting scents of shampoo and perfume.

“Did you get the pictures?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he says. “I got them.” It’s not a lie. He doesn’t lie to her, ever. But it feels like one, and the nagging sensation—somewhere just off the left of guilt—that turns the taste of their dinner that night to cardboard and twists in his stomach until he feels like he’s being crushed doesn’t abate until they’re in bed, until she’s half asleep beside him in the dark lit only by their phones. She sets hers down first.

He glances at her, at her eyes fluttering shut, at the budge of her abdomen through the blankets, and hits _delete._

Six messages evaporate, unopened.

He tosses his phone aside.

Frank curls up beside and around Karen, sneaking a hand under the blanket, following the curve of her waist.

“I’m pretty tired,” she warns him.

“Not what I’m after,” he mumbles, and lays his head down on her chest. She snakes her fingers through his hair as he moves his palm along the dome of her stomach, wondering what he’ll do when it’s not pictures of an ultrasound she’s sending him. When it’s pictures of her in a hospital, with her hair a mess, so tired, holding her new baby—their new baby—in her arms. When it’s not pictures at all, but her standing in front of him, offering him an infant and trying to tell him that something so soft and untouched could have come from him, after everything else he’s built and failed and lost. After everything he’s become, and how much it still steadies him. How many nights he doesn’t fall asleep beside her like this, because he’s out, still fixing the damage in the world he can’t ever un-see. But he does feel less twisted, less empty, when it’s all right here in front of him, so perhaps there’s hope. If he can look at his hand on her swollen stomach and know what it is that occasionally kicks against his palm and _smile_ —

There’s hope. He just has to remind himself how to feel it.

He falls asleep with his arm still around her.


	8. The Devil and the Details

When Karen hears a knock at the door she laughs, assuming that Frank left his key. It’s late but she’s wide-awake. The baby already keeps their own schedule, letting her sleep through most of the afternoon while being active through the night. She doesn’t mind, though. Every time she feels them move it feels like her world suddenly has a center of gravity again. Besides, the city looks iridescent with heavy rainfall outside her window. April’s brought on big crashing thunderstorms, and she finds nothing more soothing than watching everything get soaked through and cleansed.

“Did you lose your key again?” she calls through the door as she carefully stands. At seven and a half months, it takes a lot more effort to stand than she’s used to.

No answer. She pauses, her heart picking up and rattling her ribcage in fear. The baby kicks in protest and she breathes again, but quietly. Frank’s voice runs through her mind like a memo: “ _Don’t open the door when I’m not around at night._ ”

She tip-toes to the bedroom and pulls her gun out of the bedside drawer, moving back to the main room, both hands clutched around the handle and aiming at the door.

“Who is it?” she says in a much sterner voice. There’s a pause and she cocks the gun.

“It’s me,” says a voice it takes her a moment to register.

It’s been almost a year since she’s had anything to do with Matt Murdock.

The puts the safety back on the gun and moves quickly to the door, flinging it open.

He’s dressed in his normal clothes but he’s sporting a black eye and a battered cheekbone. Karen’s hand flies to her chest in relief, her hand, still clutching the gun, falling to her side.  But then her mind registers the situation.

 _Matt’s here_.

 _Matt’s here in the middle of the night_.

“Is it Frank?” she gasps, panic rising in her chest like hot air, strangling her from the inside out. The gun slips out of her fingers and lands on the hardwood with a thud and a rattle. “ _Oh God_ , Matt, please tell me he isn’t-”

“He’s fine. Well, as fine as _someone like him_ can be. I made sure he was busy. I need to talk to you.”

Karen drops her hand down to rest on her protruding belly, brow furrowing. The world falls back to softer shades of light instead of the hyper-pigmented, fuzzy nightmare the panic had made it.

“You could’ve just called.” She steps aside and lets him in. He closes the door behind himself and Karen leans against the kitchen counter, arms crossed over her sides, frowning.

“Would you have picked up?” he asks with a lifted brow and a quirked lip.

“Probably. I’m not angry at you anymore,” she responds.

Matt chuckles in response, sitting down in one of her dining chairs and leaning back.

“I can hear them,” he says after a beat, his eyes soft and a smile on his lips. “Their tiny heart is beating so fast… so strong. They’re very healthy.”

“I know,” Karen looks down at her stomach as she runs a soothing hand over it, feeling like she’s got a basketball stuffed in there and some change. “I had a check-up yesterday. Foggy-”

“He said you were really happy.” Matt smiles fully then, running a hand over the scruff of his jaw.

Karen crosses the room quietly and eases herself into a chair across from him.

“I am.” She smiles briefly before looking down at the source of half of her happiness. “ _We_ are, Matt. And I don’t expect you to understand-”

“I don’t think you understand what he is, Karen.” Matt cuts in, crossing his hands in front of him and leaning forward like an interrogator, the light causing his face to be all hard lines and shadows. “He’s a killer. He’s not sound of mind. What happens if he goes off the rails? He could hurt you or the _baby_.”

Karen laughs humorlessly and opens her mouth to rebuke what he’s saying because it’s _ridiculous_ before Matt holds up his hand.

“Hear me out. As long as he’s going out there, night after night, and filling people with lead, he’s not suitable to raise a child.”

“You don’t _know_ him, Matt,” Karen warns.

“Oh yeah? Where is he right now? Who’s he putting in the ground tonight, Karen? How long until it’s you? How long until it’s your kid?”

Karen feels something boil over and she clambers out of her chair, wincing against the strain on her lower back.

“Get out,” Karen snarls. “I don’t need you to save me this time, Matt. I don’t want your help. _Leave_.”

Matt stands but rests his palms flat against the table, leaning heavily on them and sighing.

“I’m not giving up on you or that baby,” he says in a low, almost threatening voice; the voice he likes to make when he wants people to know he isn’t messing around. Karen stands her ground, unfazed.

“I’m not giving up on _Frank_ ,” Karen responds with fire without missing a beat. She walks over and opens the door, gesturing animatedly out of it. “So I guess one of us is going to have to compromise and _it’s going to be you_.”

“Don’t do this, Karen.”

“Goodbye, Matt.”

“Okay! Okay. I’m sorry.” He leans against the wall next to the doorframe and crosses his arms, eyes aimed at his feet. “I just… I could never forgive myself if I walked away and something happened to you. I need to know you’re safe.”

“I’ve never felt safer,” she says with a little venom to it. Matt’s shoulders slump and he looks down.

Karen sighs and notes the way his body looks a little more sinewy than it normally does. She wonders vaguely what’s been going on in his life, if he’s happy, if someone’s been taking care of him. Since the end of Nelson & Murdock she knows little to nothing about what Matt spends his days and nights doing besides what she sees on the news. And since she’s on maternity leave from work, she doesn’t even get to hear about him from her colleagues, always ecstatically writing pieces about the devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Saving kidnapped children, disbanding a ring of sex slavers and pimps, even rescuing a goddamn _Kitten_ from a burning building.

Sometimes he really makes even Captain America look like an amateur hero, she thinks.

The “Avengers” get all the fame and glory and meanwhile there’s Matt, making sure Hell’s Kitchen is safe, keeping his finger on its pulse and reviving it whenever it falls under due to some corruption, some violence.

But Matt’s unrelenting _goodness_ is sometimes his downfall.

“Matt, I’m okay.” She moves toward him now and rests a hand on his shoulder. He looks in the direction of her eyes before his gaze sweeps down to her stomach, pausing on it, listening, some kind of shadowy emotion flickering across his face before it disappears. She follows the direction of his unseeing eyes and sighs. “I’m not some damsel in distress. I don’t have Stockholm syndrome. I’m not some hysterical pregnant woman who’s only staying with him because he’s the father of my unborn child. I know what I’m doing, and I know Frank. I know Frank much better than you do.”

“I have no doubts about that,” Matt huffs. “I just hope Frank knows enough about himself to make sure that he’s not going to do… something he’ll regret. Something I’ll have to make him pay for.”

Karen can’t help but smile a bit. She scans over Matt’s face and remembers a time when she honestly thought he was it.

She’d imagined them settling down, living in a tiny apartment together and growing old together.

It was nothing more than a naïve crush, but there was _something_ there. She’d be a fool to deny it, but whatever it was, is gone now. The crush was a confusing blip in her thinking of Matt as the brother she never had. The brother she _didn’t_ lose.

“Don’t worry about us.” She leans in and plants a chaste kiss on his cheek. He blinks, taken aback. “But if you call now, I’ll answer.”

Matt smiles ruefully, rubbing the back of his neck and shaking his head.

“Dully noted.”

Always a gentleman, he takes her hand and helps her back over to the comfy chair by the window where she was seated before his intrusion. No sooner is she seated that his head perks up as if he hears something and, with a squeeze of her shoulder, he’s out the window and gone.

Thirty seconds later Frank walks inside, hair drenched and damp all over but otherwise unscathed.

He spots the gun on the floor first, and then Karen. He rushes forward and flicks on the light, eyes scanning over every inch of her, searching for some sign that something’s wrong.

“I’m okay,” she laughs into the back of her hand. “I thought there was an intruder but it turned out to be Matt. He left before I could ask him to pick up the gun because I can’t anymore…”

“The devil was here?” Frank rumbles, his jaw clenching ever so slightly: a motion Karen wouldn’t have noticed if the dim kitchen lights were still off.

“We had a good talk. I think I convinced him to stop worrying about us.”

“He’ll never stop worrying about you,” Frank grunts. “Can’t blame him for caring about you.”

She smiles and reaches for him. He turns the lights back off and in an instant he’s at her side, lifting her up gently in his arms before settling them both down on the couch, Karen cradled in his lap. She finds one of his hands and twines their fingers together loosely, resting her head against his chest.

They sit in silence for a moment before Karen can feel something tickle up against her diaphragm. She pulls Frank’s hand and sets it up on top of her stomach, pressing it down.

“Hiccups,” she grins.

Frank meets her eyes before looking down at the way their still-tangled hands bump up and down lightly. A tired smile forms on his lips and he leans in and presses a kiss to her forehead. They both stay still and feel their baby hiccup while the rain batters down against the window pane.

Content, happy.

 _Safe_.


	9. Labored Thoughts

It happens in the morning while Karen’s down the street from her apartment at an outdoor market. Frank’s with her, wearing a baseball hat that obscures most of his face and not looking anyone directly in the eye. No one looks twice at him, anyway.

They’re just any other couple, soon-to-be-parents. Frank has his hand resting on Karen’s lower back, grazing the fabric of her sundress, firm yet gentle.

She’s looking at some peaches, trying to gauge whether or not they’re in season yet, when she feels it. It hits her like a freight train, pitching her forward and causing a peach to go rolling down the street.

“Oh _God_ ,” she rasps as Frank leads her over to a bench, sitting her down. “This is _so_ much worse than what I was expecting.”

She kind of thought it would be today. She felt a few cramps earlier that morning but thought nothing of it. She’d read they’re supposed to get gradually worse.

She should have known that Frank Castle’s kid wouldn’t make things so easy for her.

“Breathe,” Frank grunts at her, taking her phone out of her purse and scrolling down to Foggy’s number. “Nelson, get your ass to Karen’s place. It’s happening. And hurry the fuck up.” He tosses the phone back in her purse before helping Karen back to her feet, a sturdy arm wrapped around her ribcage, and leading her back to her apartment.

 

*

 

He’s clinging to the phone, holding it to his ear with both hands. The sounds from the other end of the line fades in and out as the idiot lawyers hand wavers. Frank can hear him in the background, “Shit, shit, ok . . .” as he stares down the birth of someone else’s child. Karen is screaming in his ear. Screaming and grunting and pushing and gasping.

“Breathe,” he reminds her. “Breathe, baby, breathe.  You got this.”

Karen screams again. Swears. Frank could almost smile. _That’s my girl._ Tough as nails. She’s doing this without an epidural. She wanted to be awake and aware of every part of her body. Whether she’s regretting that now he doesn’t know.

He switches ears. The phone slides against his temple, sweat slickened. His fingers are aching from how hard he’s holding it. The way he should be holding her hand. She’d probably break his fingers. He’d be all right with that. But he’s a criminal. He’s a murderer. And he can’t be there to help her. So he says what he can as her screaming fades to heaving breathing.

“Come on, sweetheart. Keep pushing. You got this. You can do this. You’re almost there.” After two hours of labor, he hopes that’s true.

Karen releases a vicious, guttural shout he winces away from. But he doesn’t drop the phone. He can’t. His eyes are watering and he can’t.

“You’re almost there,” his voice breaks. “You get to meet your baby. Just a little more.”

She gasps his name.

“I’m here. I’m here, sweetheart, I’m here. I’m right here.”

Karen groans.

“I’m right here. I got you. Just a little more.”

He swears he can hear her hands tightening on the rails of her hospital bed. Pictures her red faced and crying and gritting her teeth, and he wants to kiss her; hold her head and press his lips into the sweaty mess of her hair. _I got you._

Karen _shrieks._ Groans. Launches an offensive against her own body. The lawyer is in the background again, louder now. “Karen! Karen, here it comes!” and he’s laughing, a little hysteric, nearly drowned out by the teeth-gritting gravel of her shouts. Frank presses the phone so hard into his cheekbone that it aches through his skull.

“Come on, sweetheart. You’ve got this. I love you. You’ve got this—”

And then there’s a sharp, mewling wail—a first breath of air and a shout of protest against the cold, loud brightness of the world, and all at once he’s choking up, too. Laughing and choking and there are tears in his eyes—and it hasn’t hit him yet. That he’s been here before. That he’s already done this. There’s nothing but the moment. That new voice screaming in the background, the bustle of scrubs-clad bodies and Karen’s labored, hysterical, half laughing-half sobbing breathing.

“You did it, baby! You did it! Karen—”

And then there’s static on the line. The lawyer’s distant voice. Shuffling of people, and the phone pushed away. And then Frank is screaming her name, his voice all ragged and raw. And he can almost hear her, wants to believe he hears her, say his back to him. “Frank. We did it.” and then static, and a click and a beep as the line goes dead.


	10. Elena

“Never thought I’d say this about the Punisher’s kid… but she’s definitely a cutie. _Hi there_ , little princess!”

Foggy pokes the tiny baby’s nose, and Karen looks away from her for the first time since she woke up and gives Foggy a small grin.

“She’s… _I made that_ ,” Karen whispers, in utter awe. She can’t take her eyes away.

She has her eyes. That’s the first thing she noticed the moment she was handed to her, wailing and covered in muck. When she was placed in Karen’s arms, her cries stopped and she just blinked up at her with big deep blue eyes, unblinking. It’s a bizarre thing to see your own eyes staring back at you. The shape of them, however, is all Frank. Sloe-shaped with hooded lids­­

The rest of her face is undeniably Karen, however. A thin, waifish nose and plump, pointed lips with a deep cupid’s bow. She has Frank’s ears though – they stick out slightly from her head. She looks angelic and fragile, almost like a cartoon instead of a real, breathing human. It makes Karen laugh thinking that such a tiny thing with such big, innocent eyes could have caused her so much hell coming into the world. She’s strong, she thinks. Definitely her father’s daughter, no doubt about it. She came into the world screaming and knocking her fists around, already ready to fight life with fire.

She doesn’t even know, Karen thinks, what a dark place the world can be. She wants to keep it that way for as long as possible. She’s holding a part of her in her arms – like a part of her own soul chipped off and manifested itself in this impossibly tiny human. Karen _knows_ what it feels like to fall in love. This is different. This is otherworldly.

But right now… right now she’s so _small_. Barely seven pounds, she sits in her arms so nicely.

“You did make that, dude.” Foggy looks up at her and chuckles. “Good work. Real top-job there.”

Karen wrinkles her nose and chuckles. She runs a gentle finger over her baby’s cheek, afraid to touch her too much. She knows her bones are so soft, so breakable… her girl may be strong, but right now she’s like a vulnerable piece of china. Karen’s worried about someone _breathing_ on her too hard.

Rich, considering she almost ripped Karen in two coming out.

When the cab pulls up to Karen’s apartment, Foggy hugs her with one arm, careful not to crush the precious cargo she’s holding in her arms.

“Good luck,” he says. It goes without saying what he’s wishing her luck _with_.

She uses the elevator, something she never does, because she can’t risk tripping. When she makes it up to the apartment, her baby is waking up fully from the nap she took in the cab, wiggling her little chubby arms under the blanket she’s wrapped in. Karen leans down and coos at her gently, brushing her lips against her smooth forehead.

She opens the door to a familiar sight: Frank pacing, his arms crossed tightly against his chest, his lips set into a hard line and his eyes looking a bit distant like he’s off somewhere in his head fighting demons.

He stops when he sees her, eyes first landing on her face and going wide before slowly – _slowly –_ they move down to the bundle in her arms. His lips fall apart and she watches as the nervous twitch in his trigger finger stills. Everything seems suspended in mid-air.

Karen’s lip twitches, beckoning him to her with a tilt of her head.

“C’mere.”

 

**

 

He almost can’t do it. His arms are frozen at his sides and though he’s able to move towards her, he does so with the crawling panic of the unplanned battlefield, just waiting for a reason to go to ground, to bolt, to hurtle himself in any other direction but toward that bundle in her arms. The length of time it takes him to cross the room is infinite. But then, there he is, staring down into a tiny little face with a button of a nose and closed eyes the same shape as his own. And he feels the blood drain out of his face. This moment is always terrifying, and wondrous, he’d thought before. But this time there is nothing but fear. Abject, immobilizing terror because this girl is his. Because she will depend on him and she could love him, because he _made_ her. And she’s real. She’s there, sleeping in her mother’s arms, flesh and blood and potential and Karen is waiting but he can’t _move._

“Frank,” she says softly. And he looks into her face, wordless and desperate, trying to tell her he doesn’t know how to do this anymore, though he’s unable to actually speak. She cracks a little smile and looks down at her daughter, her _daughter,_ in her arms and says, whispers.

“Hey Elena, say hi to Daddy.”

He almost breaks right there. His knees threaten to give out. He wants to fall to the floor and cover his face with his hands but instead he’s reaching out, gingerly, in a daze, and Karen is placing this precious, precious thing in his arms and he can’t collapse because his only imperative is to keep her safe.

She’s so small. He could hold her in one arm if he weren’t so terrified. He clutches her close to his chest with both, staring down into her face. She stirs in her sleep.

“Hey,” he manages to say to her. He means to add her name. Or her nickname: it’s already in his head. Ellie, his baby Ellie. But he can’t get the words out. There’s a lump rising to fast in his throat and next he knows, he’s choking on it. And silently, with a pursed lip, trying to bite it all back and failing, Frank Castle is sobbing. He’s crying and Elena is squirming under the warm wet of tear drops and the sudden contact of her father’s forehead—so very, very lightly—brought down to hers. Her skin is so soft. Brand new and untouched.

He wants to keep it that way forever. He wants to never put her down. Because she’s here, now. And she’s _alive_ and she’s _real._

Her mother—her _mother—_ has to help him sit down, still clutching their daughter to his chest.

 


	11. Muscle Memory

Holding the bottle is all muscle memory.  Elena’s bright blue eyes are the disconcerting part, fixed on his face as she chugs away at the bottle instead of relaxing into it with her eyes closed. She’s got these long lashes that make her look like a doll, making her unreal again. Sometimes she seems that way: sometimes she’s a miracle, sometimes she’s a dream. The best she ever looks to him is when she’s cradled against Karen’s chest—it’s then that it all feels _right._ Other times all he can feel is terror. That paralyzing element of being a parent, but worse than he remembers, as if he’s starting all over, as if at any minute he might forget what to do and just drop her in her crib and walk out and find a reason to pull the trigger until he stops dreaming. Right now is one of the unreal moments—one of those dreams that repeats over and over and you can’t ever get it quite right. But he’s doing well so far.

“Take it easy,” he tells her, murmuring. His own voice sounds like the stuff of nightmares without him meaning to, all low and hard even with a laugh behind it. He has to pull the bottle away for a bit to let her swallow. She drinks like she doesn’t need to breathe. But at least she won’t be hungry again until Karen gets home: She’d promised that lawyer friend of hers a night out as soon as she could drink again. One fiasco with a breast pump later, and she’s out remembering how beer tastes, and he’s here, totally alone with Ellie for the first time in her two weeks of life. And it’s been easy.  He knows what to do with babies. He’d let her lay back against his chest and watch some weird kids show on Karen’s laptop while he sat with his headphones plugged into the police scanner.  There’s something about hearing it, planning out what he’d do about the things they report if he did go out, that helps with the constant itching in his brain that Ellie sometimes adds to, and sometimes takes away.

Ellie squirms. He gives her the bottle back until she slows down on her own.

“There we go,” he says. Ellie stares at him as best an infant can focus on anything. Probably memorizing his face. Babies are good at that. He remembers Maria telling him so as she held Frank Jr. up to a webcam, trying to teach him his father’s face through a screen, through hours’ worth of time difference and miles and miles and worlds away. He’d heard Karen mention it, too, fascinated by this new world she was creating. Her pregnancy had been fifty percent research. She knows everything, now.

He swings Ellie gently up to his shoulder to burp her, taking himself out of the line of fire.

“You got one hell of a thousand yard stare for a little thing,” he jokes to her as he pats her back. Her tiny hands move against his shirt. Her little body practically fits in one hand. He’s half afraid of the gentle patting, trying not to imagine it breaking her.

When he brings her down again, she’s looking at him with sleepier eyes, less focused. How she can be so at ease is a marvel to him.

“You’re not scared of me at all,” he murmurs. “You and your mama.”

He thinks on that for a moment, watching her closing eyes, so much like his, but so much like Karen’s.

“That’s good,” he tells her. “You don’t have to be. I’m not gonna let anything happen to you, you got that? Not ever.”

He won’t even bring the dangerous parts of his life into the apartment. Except for the scanner. The guns, the vest, they’re elsewhere, locked up in a safe house in Brooklyn. He’s got this, now. He isn’t going to taint it. So far, it’s an effort that’s paying off: quitting this war isn’t like quitting the last one. He’s not tired . . .  he’s not dead inside. Itchy, maybe, but not tired. And most of the nightmares he doesn’t remember when he wakes up.

He plants a very, very hesitant kiss on the top of her soft little head, inhaling her baby-scent. Unique in this world, nothing is quite like it. It’s calming, in some ways, though it mostly sends his heart into overdrive. All that instinct—hold her, protect her . . . protect her.

He puts her down for a nap before going back to the police scanner. He unplugs the headphones and lets it play in the background. The white noise puts Ellie right out, despite the sometimes frantic tones. He keeps in turned down, just in case.

He falls asleep planning a route to Queens that would take him by one of his arsenals first, pondering whether he’d rather bring the 60 or the 240, the AK or the M16.

 

 

Frank wakes up to Ellie crying. His first reaction is panic, even though he can hear nothing in particular in her wailing that sounds unusual. She woke up, she’s crying. It’s typical. But he runs to the crib anyway.

“Hey kiddo,” he says, scooping her out of the crib. She wriggles and screams. His first guess is the diaper, though that proves clean. A little patting and a little bouncing reveals nothing. It’s not her stomach. She’s not hot. She’s red in the face, but it’s just from screaming. He sets her back in the crib for a moment, stepping away and closing the bedroom door, breathing. The panic response won’t stop, and he knows better that to sit and listen to baby wailing when he’s keyed up. He’d had a nervous breakdown doing that with Lisa after his first tour. Noise was a problem for him after that first one—he’d gotten over it later.

Breathing slow, he checks off things in his head that could have set her off. One of them is the nap itself. Frank Jr. used to do that, wake up and cry. He’d just lay there, bawling, until someone picked him up for a while. They’d figured that out over a video call, too. Maria had gone to pick him up, desperate to get him to stop, wondering if the nice glowing screen and that strange man they called Daddy would be enough to quiet him down. He hadn’t looked at the screen, not once, but the tighter Maria held him—clutching him with the urgency of stress, probably just waiting for Lisa to join in, complaining about all the crying the way big siblings do—the quieter he got.

Frank turns back around. Opens the door. Ellie is still screaming her tiny little lungs out to the best of her ability.

“Easy, kiddo,” he tells her. She probably can’t even hear him. He walks over to the crib, prepared to pick her up. That’s all she probably needs. To be held.

He stares down at her, red in the face and so unhappy. So small an alone in that big crib. Needing to be held. He knows that’s all she needs. His pulse is pounding in his ears and his hand is twitching at his side and she just wants someone to hold her in this new world with all its sound and light and big, complicated things she won’t have words for, not for a long while yet. He knows that’s all that crying is. He knows it in his bones. All that crying—Frank Jr. used to do that.

He can’t make himself pick her up.

Frank Jr. used to do that.

 

*

 

Matt and Foggy both walk her to her apartment building. It feels almost like old times – minus the crippling poverty and constant fear of death. She isn’t drunk, but she’s tired enough that she can feel the alcohol making everything fuzzy around the edges, her heart pumping a little harder in her ears than it normally would. It makes her giddy.

“Need us to come up?” Matt says when they reach her block, slowing his pace.

She can’t help but snort and shake her head, tucking the piece of hair that comes loose with the action back behind her ear.

“Thanks, but no thanks. Frank’s got everything under control, I’m sure.”

“Alright… well tell Ellie her Uncle Matt says hi.” He offers her a stiff, close-lipped smile.

“Tell her that her _godfather_ Foggy says hi too.” Foggy grins and tucks his hands into his pockets. “That will never not be hilarious to say. Have I ever done my Marlon Brando impersonation for you…?”

Karen rolls her eyes and beams, pulling them both in for a hug.

“Let’s do this again soon,” she says as she squeezes their shoulders. Matt smiles and then stills a bit, looking past her with unseeing eyes into the apartment building.

“I can hear her crying,” he says in a low tone, his eyes narrowing. “She sounds distressed…”

Karen blinks. She turns without saying anything else, rushing up the stairs to her place. When she reaches the door, she can hear it too: it isn’t full-on crying and wailing, but more of a soft hiccup sort of sound. Karen fumbles with her keys before hurrying inside and into her guestroom-turned-nursery. She gasps silently, startled by the scene she finds.

Ellie’s in the crib. Her face is red and tear-stained and her voice is a bit hoarse like she’s cried herself out entirely. Her tiny arms wave around above her, reaching for something, _anything_ , and finding nothing but air. Frank is on the floor beside her crib, his legs sprawled and his face in his hands. She switches on the light.

“Frank?” She takes a step towards him and he looks up at her, his face red and his eyes glossed over from desperate tears.

“I couldn’t do it…” he sputters, his chest heaving as he speaks. “I couldn’t hold her. She… Junior used to… she just needed to be _held_ … I _couldn’t fucking do it_ …”

Karen’s too exhausted to think straight. She’s too exhausted to try and work through this tonight. She knows it’s probably a losing battle, regardless. Frank’s the type that either comes around on his own or doesn’t come around at all. And seeing him like this makes her _ache_ … but it’s overridden by the sad whimpering noise her baby’s making in the crib. She feels like she’s being torn in two.

“C’mon.” She tosses her purse down and walks over to him, grabbing one of his arms and trying to hoist him. He doesn’t budge, unsurprisingly, and does nothing to help her in her efforts. When she lets go of his arm he slumps down, burying his face back in his hands and mumbling something she can’t make out.

“Come to bed, Frank,” she tries, kneeling down in front of him. “Let’s go. C’mon.”

Again, he doesn’t budge. Doesn’t even move to let her know he heard her. He’s lost, somewhere far away and she can’t reach him now. She squeezes his shoulder before standing and stepping around him, gently lifting Ellie into her arms.

“Shh, pumpkin. Mommy’s got you. Everything’s okay. You’re gonna sleep with me tonight.” She steps carefully over Frank’s legs and rubs Ellie’s back, taking her into the bedroom and lying her down on the bed, close enough that Frank wouldn’t crush her if he decides to come to bed, but far enough that _she_ won’t accidentally crush her either. Ellie’s exhausted from all the crying, mostly just blinking up at her slowly, her lids covering most of her dark blue eyes. Karen curls up beside her, fighting back bitter tears, and strokes her finger along her soft cheek until her eyes close completely and her breathing evens out. Her tiny hand curls instinctively around Karen’s pointer finger as she sleeps and Karen can’t stop the tears from overflowing now. She isn’t quite sure what she’s crying about, whether it’s Frank or whether it’s the fact that her baby was scared and alone for so long, crying and crying with no one to hold her, no one to tell her it was going to be okay. 

The thing of it is: she understands. She could never be _angry_ at Frank for this. His children were murdered right in front of him before, and she knows nothing will ever heal that. It’s not something that _can_ be healed. Even Ellie can’t heal it, and she _knows_ he loves her. He looks at her like she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, but there’s also the fear in his eyes that builds up slowly every time. Just like how he’ll never be able to shake his war, he’ll never be able to lose the raw pain of his loss. Ellie’s a new variable to that; something else that can be lost, can be killed in front of him all over again.

Exhaustion forces her under eventually, and she drifts in and out of a restless sleep, subconsciously all too-aware of the fragile little human sleeping beside her and too afraid to move or roll onto her. The clock on the dresser on the other side of the room reads 3:48am when she hears footsteps across hardwood and a door opening and closing.

Then, silence.


	12. Relief

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is rated PG-13 for violence and mention of attempted rape (not involving Frank or Karen).

It’s supposed to be a walk, just a walk, he just needs to breathe, never mind that he’s walking in the exact direction of the safe house. It’s a borough away and he’s not going anywhere near it. He’s not going near anything. He just needs _air_.

His hands still haven’t stopped shaking. Not just the trigger finger. Both hands. He keeps them clenched at his sides as he makes his way down the street. It’s never silent in this city. It was drizzling, earlier, and the noise and the streetlights alike seem to refract off the puddles. Sirens. Voices. The occasional indistinct clang. A garbage truck, maybe, at this time of night. Somewhere, on some other street, there is traffic. A dull roar. He tries to breathe it in, and finds his breath is shaking, too.

Ahead of him a door slams. The sound like a bullet in his exploding mind. He looks up at the sound and finds a woman stepping out of a building, still pulling on her coat, flustered. She glances down the street. Sees Frank. And puts her head down as she walks in the opposite direction.

He slows his pace to give her space. She looks upset enough without some stranger stalking after her. He walks far enough back that the shadow that melts out of the alleyway behind her, three blocks into her frantic stroll, doesn’t notice him. Or doesn’t care.

The shadow, man shaped but inhuman—he can’t be human, doing what Frank suspects he is—slinks after her at a steadily increasing pace, timing his gate so that he gains on her just as she gains on the next dim alleyway. The shadow has a hand at his belt.

“HEY.”

Frank’s shout is nasty, guttural and dangerous and the woman ahead of them shudders away from it, looks back at her two apparent pursuers, and bolts. The shadow tries to melt back into the stone work, diving for the alley. But Frank is already running, and he’s faster. And there’s a gate at the end of the alley that makes the chase short, anyway. He catches the shadow) masquerading-as-a-man as he tries to clamor for the fire escape. Frank slams him into the brick of the adjacent wall.

“Whatya got in your hand, there? Huh?”

The shadow, filthy thing that looks for all appearances a thin white man somewhere in his twenties, with an unkempt scruff of a goatee, swears.

“Shit, man, nothing. Get off me. I wasn’t doin’ nothin’.”

“Not yet.”

Frank pins him between his shoulder blades and wrenches his arm back, twisting his wrist til something snaps. The shadow screams. The 9 mill drops from his hand.

“What were gonna do with that, huh?”

“Nothin’, just scare her! Just wanted her purse! I’m broke, man, I just need the cash. I wasn’t gonna hurt the bitch! Guns not even loaded I swear!”

Frank gives the arm a twist. The shadow buckles, screaming, and Frank reaches underneath him to grab a hand full of his jeans. They’re unbuckled. Unzipped.

Frank keeps hold of the arm has he ducks down to grab the gun. A pistol. Cool in his hand.

A little bullet, a 9 mill. Needs to be placed just right. Lined up with something important no ER nurse can dig out. Like the back if the shadow’s skull.

“Oh, fuck, man, fuck, don’t be like this! What’s she to you huh? Walk away. Just walk away. You don’t gotta do this—“

“Do what?” the words don’t sound nasty anymore. They’re easy. Cool. Calculated. Nothing like the blood roaring in his ears, furious and hungry. “I thought you said it wasn’t loaded.”

He knocks the pistol’s cold muzzle against the shadow’s head, and he smacks into the wall face first.

Frank could leave him like that. Scared and bleeding, nose probably broken. He could take the gun and go.

He could.

He won’t.

His heartbeat is all he can hear. He can taste the adrenaline. Something in his mouth like copper. His head white noise with one clear directive: Waste the shitbag. White noise he loves. Blood rushing in his skull, heart in overdrive, he’s breathing easier than he has in weeks. Waste the shitbag.

He could let him go.

He doesn’t.

When the body drops, Frank walks off. Done with it. Waiting for the adrenaline to subside back into the hum and rattle of the city night. He’s sitting on the rooftop of their apartment, staring off in the general direction of Jersey, just thinking nothing, feeling nothing, when it occurs to him that he’s still holding the pistol.


	13. Smiles

When Ellie smiles for the first time, Frank isn’t there.

It shouldn’t be a big deal. In her lifetime, Ellie will smile millions of times. She’ll light up the room with it. People will fall in love with her over it. Karen knows this, because when she sees it, it fills her with sunshine. It’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen.

And she will do it again. And again.

And it shouldn’t be a big deal that Frank wasn’t there.

But it is.

He doesn’t come home every night, and she’s okay with that. She doesn’t ask him where he’s been and he doesn’t make any effort to tell her. But when he does come home, things seem better. He seems better. He makes an effort. He holds Ellie and kisses her and plays with her. He helps feed her and wash her and put her to sleep.

He comes to bed and holds Karen, makes love to her, and she can feel the intensity in his eyes when he moves over her. She knows the unspoken things in his mind, she feels them deep in her bones and it sets her whole world on fire like it did before.

But then there’s the blood.

When Frank begins coming home with less frequency, when he does show up, he’s normally bloodied and bruised. There are a few nights, even, she has to fish bullets out of him and sew up gory gashes.

And it worries her, but she says nothing. She knows Frank’s war never ends. She knows that this is how she gets to keep him. This is how Ellie gets to have a father.

But then Ellie smiles, and Frank isn’t there.

It happens after she changes her diaper. Ellie’s feeling playful, moving her chubby arms around and touching everything she can feel. Once Karen has the clean diaper on her, she smiles and leans down to press a kiss to her smooth belly.

“All better now,” she coos, smiling and lifting her up, grasping gently under her arms. She just turned two months old, and she’s still so soft and smells of a new baby but she’s more expressive. Her eyes wander around the room and she bounces her limbs with intrigue, making quiet gurgling and chirping noises.

Karen grins when Ellie stares into her face with wide, observant eyes, watching how her mother takes her in, like her face is the most exciting thing she’s ever seen.

“I love you,” Karen says quietly in a sing-song voice, gently swaying Ellie in mid-air.

And then it happens: Ellie smiles. It’s small at first, eyes as big as saucers and her lips puckered, but then it broadens until it’s an open-mouthed, toothless grin. She flails her little arms as Karen stares at it in shock, having another one of those moments where she thinks, I created that, she’s mine, that beautiful smiling tiny human is mine.

 

Frank shows up three nights later – two black eyes and a chunk out of his left arm. His eyes don’t read pain, though. They’re bright and… exuberant, almost. Alive. His trigger finger twitches almost uncontrollably by his side as Karen slides the needle through the torn flesh, pulling it together and sewing it up. She feels bile rising in her throat but she swallows it down and stays silent.

He must notice the way she avoids his eyes, her lips pressed into a hard line.

When she finishes, she pats a tissue soaked in peroxide over the stiches and turns away.

“Hey,” he says, stopping her with a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You alright?”

She doesn’t look at him, but she clenches her jaw, feeling the tears welling at her ducts. She blinks them back and stares at the off-white wall of the bathroom.

“No more, Frank,” she says evenly. “No more.”

Frank stays silent for a moment and she looks at him. His face is hard, and she matches it.

“She can recognize faces now, you know. She can recognize yours – her daddy’s. And if she can’t understand that you’re hurt now, she will soon. She’s growing up and she’s going to grow up thinking that this… that you coming home like this… is normal. This is going to fuck her up, Frank. She doesn’t deserve this.”

Frank’s shoulders visibly stiffen, turning into hard angles. He stares her down with a hardness she isn’t used to. Karen stands and turns away from him, crossing her arms tightly around herself.

“She smiled. Two days ago, she smiled. And she’s been smiling ever since, and you haven’t seen it. I get why you’ve been gone. I get what you’re doing. I’m not an idiot, I don’t need you to spell it out for me. But… something has to change. She can’t see you like that, Frank.”

She turns back to face him. There’s silence for another long minute. Frank doesn’t look at her; his eyes are focused on the pattern of the tile below her feet.

“She won’t see me bloody again,” Frank mutters so low it’s barely a rumble in his chest. “You can count on that.”

Karen nods once. She walks back to him and kneels in front of him, gently cupping his face so she doesn’t press too hard on the yellowing bruises under his eyes. He looks into her eyes, but his vision is unfocused.

“Hey,” she says quietly. “She’ll be awake soon. She’ll smile for you. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, Frank.”

She watches as the corner of his lips lift once, as if they were simply twitching. He leans in and presses a kiss to her forehead before standing and walking past her.

 

 

He keeps his promise. He never comes home bloody again.

Instead, he barely comes home at all.

When he does, he’s showered and unscathed save for the faint purple lines of bruises occasionally gracing his cheekbones.

The visits continue to get less and less frequent. Ellie still lights up when she sees him, and Karen makes sure that she says “Daddy” around her as much as she can when Frank’s there, but he somehow starts to feel worlds away.

It's when his clothes disappear from the dresser that she realizes that, though he visits, in some ways he never comes home at all.

She begins to feel Frank Castle fading from her life. And she knows him, so she knows he’s doing this on purpose. And it feels like the end of the world in slow motion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PSA to our lovely loyal readers: worry not. 
> 
> xoxo


	14. Best Laid Plans

Frank is down to the 45. This has been messy, two belts of ammo gone and six guys still standing. He’d even resorted to the claymore, at one point. A fucking antipersonnel mine on the street in New York City. To think he’d once come home to this place and thought it was civilization. It isn’t. It’s a warzone. And just like any warzone, some of the battles he’s fighting here go better than others. This is not one of the better ones.

But it’s when the odds are trying to kill him that he does some of his best work. Bloodiest, but best. A great gun, the 45. Always handy in a crunch.

The last bastard standing goes down with a shot to the knee. Frank is running low on bullets, and hopes beyond hope that he won’t need to shoot the guy again to get him to talk. He doesn’t. He spills his guts so fast Frank has to wonder why he was working for this gang in the first place. If he even cares—talking and talking until it gets to where he’s talking _too_ much, trying to rationalize with the muzzle of the 45.

“Listen,” he’s saying, “I’m new to this. Brand fucking new—look, I had nothing to do with your family! I couldn’t have! That’s what all this is about right? Your—”

Frank unloads the last two bullets in the magazine into his head.

 _Yes and no,_ he thinks, staring down at the body, the startled expression and glassy eyes, _yes and no._ Because he can see them when he pulls the trigger—Maria, Lisa, Frank Jr.—and their ghosts feel less restless in his mind, if only for a moment, every time one of these shitstains dies. And in those moments he can almost remember them as they were, rather than remembering them dying. But it’s also the thing that pulls family away. He can’t go to Karen and Ellie like this, blood on his hands and a bullet wound in his side. It’ll be a day or two of healing before he can go back. And by then, there may be something else he needs to do.

 _I’ll go and see them, soon,_ he thinks.

He wonders whether it’s a lie.


	15. Baby Steps

From the low roof of the building across the street, he can see into the apartment window. He’s told Karen to close the drapes before, but she can’t live without the sunlight. She likes for Ellie to see it.

Frank debates going inside from that distance. He can see movement in the corners of the window, enough to suggest that there’s someone else in the house, maybe Nelson. The lawyer sees more of his daughter than he does. Some days that turns his stomach. Some days he thinks it might be for the best. He doesn’t know which of the two extremes today is—only that he’s wandered home like a man in a dream, and that he’s watching what could be his life play out through the window, like fiction on a television. Like something he can’t touch.

Someone moves into view in the apartment. A man’s body, too lean to be Nelson. He has a careful, collected way of standing.

Murdock.

The devil stands nearest the window. Nelson is there, too, off to the side, and he can see Karen’s feet, the rest of her just out of sight across the room. And beside those feet are two others. Two, tiny feet in frilly socks, seeking the ground with haphazard, jerking motions, lots of stomping and backtracking. Her hands are out of view,  arms raised, and he can imagine what’s going on: Karen guiding Ellie across the floor, her tiny hands in hers.

A pang in his chest nearly drops him off the edge of the roof. A feeling as if he were splitting. He’s never seen her walk before. And he wonders, nauseous with the thought, if she’s able to do it on her own, yet. If Karen let her hands go, could she move across the floor toward whoever was available to catch her.

Murdock drops to one knee in front of the window, hands outstretched, and it seems as if he might get the answer to his question. But he’s off the roof too soon to be sure.

Frank pounds down the stairs, bolts across the street. He runs up the stairs of the apartment building rather than waiting on the elevator, jams his key in the door. His chest is heaving and is hands are shaking, and he has trouble turning the knob. He bursts through the door, slamming it open, straining its hinges.

No one in the room looks more startled than Karen. She’s standing nearest to him, head cranked around to look at him, Ellie hovering at her side as if reluctant to step toward anyone else. Murdock is back on his feet—he must have heard Frank coming.

“Frank?” Karen begins, watching him sink to his knees, eyes for nothing but the dark haired girl peeking around her mother’s legs. Ellie regards him for a moment that feels as if it lasts forever, that might just break him apart. And then her eyes, so much like her mothers, light up, taking her whole expression with them. A smile so wide she looks as if she’s been caught mid-laugh spreads across her face.

“Daddy!” she says, the word mushed and awkward.

Frank’s heart ruptures.

He feels it happen. He feels his chest swell and something burst and something else explode up into his throat, a hard lump. He swallows it, but it won’t move, and won’t let him say anything, won’t let him greet her. All he can do is put his arms out to her.

It’s enough.

Ellie wobbles forward by a step, her mother turning to follow her momentum. She waves her foot in the air a few times before setting down the second step. By the third, Karen has to release her hands.

She looks so unstable. So fragile, coming toward him. Each step feels like a lifetime, every shaking movement of her untrained muscles enough to flood him with adrenaline, straining his bleeding heart. It’s pounding against his ribcage so hard he wonders if everyone in the room can see it—or hear it. He knows Murdock can. There’s no way he could miss it.

Ellie wavers. Karen lunges, and stops herself. Her daughter is resilient: she recovers herself with a smile. Their daughter.

His little girl.

He tries to talk around the lump again. It comes out choked and voiceless.

“Hey sweetheart,” he tries to say, “that’s it. C’mere.”

She toddles onward, undaunted, and rushes, trips, the last few steps into his waiting arms. He closes her in against his chest.

“Daddy!” she says again. The lump is massive now.

“Hey baby girl,” he chokes around it, clutching her against his chest. She wraps her little arms around his neck. He lets his face fall in against her delicate little shoulder. She doesn’t smell like a baby anymore. Her whole head of hair is soft against his cheek. He looks up at Karen with only his eyes and finds her crying, silently, into her hand.

“Was that?” he tries to say something intelligible, but he’s no better off than she is. His eyes are stinging and his throat feels utterly shut. “Was that . . . the first . . . has she . . . ?”

Karen nods.

And that’s it, for Frank. He can’t say anymore. He’s too choked up, breathing hard through his nose. He looks back to Ellie, wanting so badly to tell her he’s proud, to tell her thank you, to tell her I’m so sorry, but all that comes out is a hard choking sound.

She puts her little palm against his cheek.

 

*

 

For a long moment, nothing moves. Everything stays resolutely still as if suspended in mid-air, and Karen can hear her heart pounding in her ears. She can’t stop the tears – doesn’t try.

The only sounds she can hear are the soft sounds of Frank choking back sobs and Ellie babbling up at him, dragging her tiny hands along his jaw, his nose, his lips, his eyes… She’s turning 11 months old in a couple of weeks, and she’s only seen Frank a handful of times in the past few months, so she has no idea how she still knows him… knows that he’s _Daddy_. But the details don’t matter.

The stillness in the room is shattered by Frank scooping Ellie into his arms and standing up, his gaze flickering up toward Karen. Her heart aches at the look at his eyes.

“Baby,” he says softly in a tone of voice she hasn’t heard in months. “Baby, I’m so… I’m so _sorry_ …”

Behind her, Foggy clears his throat uncomfortably.

“That’s our cue to exit. C’mon, Murdock. You owe me a beer or five.”

Frank moves over to let them out. His eyes flicker to Matt once and he hardens slightly before looking back at Ellie. Matt pauses when he walks up beside Frank, his brow knit.

“Keep them safe. Keep them happy,” he says. Frank ignores him and steps away toward Karen. Foggy grabs Matt’s arm and pulls him out, shutting the door behind them.

Frank looks back up at her, and there’s a beat where there’s nothing but their eyes locking. Karen tries desperately to read his mind but can’t. She’s never been able to. He lets out a sudden huff of air and ducks his head down to brush his nose against Ellie’s hair.

“I almost missed this,” he mutters flatly, his eyes squeezed shut with guilt.

Karen shakes her head and steps forward.

“But you didn’t, Frank. You’re here.”

“I could have.” The words are harsh but when he looks up at her he’s all softness, all regrets. His expression shifts to something more resolute. “But I won’t miss anything else. I’m going to… I’m going to fix this. I’m going to be better.” He takes another step toward her and Ellie turns her head, spotting Karen and beaming, reaching for her.

“Mama!” Ellie giggles. Karen takes her and gently settles her against her chest, rubbing her back and bouncing her a bit. She looks up to see Frank with tears in his eyes again.

“I’m going to be better, Karen,” he says again, his voice thick with emotion. He swallows and blinks hard, pushing back the tears she guesses he doesn’t feel he has a right to. He looks at them like they’re his entire world. “I promise.”

Karen smiles then, reaching for him and letting him wrap his arms around both of his girls, pressing his lips to Karen’s forehead. Ellie squirms happily between then, turning her face up to blink at both of them with bright eyes, taking in the sight of them together.

A family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EPILOGUE INCOMING, STAY TUNED


	16. Epilogue

When Ellie rides a tricycle for the first time, Frank is there.

She tried negotiating with him so she could ride it down the street to the gelato shop she always tries to drag them into when they walk past, but he didn’t bend to her will _this time_ , making her settle for the concrete path around the small courtyard out back of the apartment complex.

Karen tucks some Band-Aids and Neosporin into her pocket _just in case_ and meets them outside, arriving just in time to watch Frank secure a pink and purple helmet over Ellie’s ponytail. Ellie spots her and makes a B-line, running over to tug on her shorts and bounce excitedly.

“Mommy! Daddy says if I’m good enough he’ll take my training wheels off!!”

Karen raises her eyebrows. Frank snorts and rolls his eyes, a playful smile hinting on his lips.

“Dream on, kiddo. I said in a couple weeks, _maybe_.”

Ellie’s exaggerated pout is short-lived as Frank snatches her up and squeezes her against him, peppering kisses into her hair. She squeals happily and squirms as he tickles her and holds her close, and Karen takes a moment to look at the happiness in his features.

Frank Castle will always be at war. It’s a war he fights every single day, and every single night. But it’s a quieter war now. Some nights Karen will wake up to an empty bed in the middle of the night and she won’t question it when he returns while she’s giving Ellie breakfast. The occasional black eye or cut makes Ellie question why Daddy has an “ouchie”, but it’s nothing Karen can’t handle. It’s compromise, and she _knows_ there’s much more compromise on Frank’s part than hers.

There’s still blood, but there’s less of it. There’s still pain, but there’s less of it.

The ceasefires in his mind last for longer, now.

Karen watches with an amused smile while Frank hauls Ellie over and sets her down on the seat of the tricycle, mumbling softly to her about how to grip the handles and how to pedal. She fidgets excitedly, her eyes narrowed in a determined way as she looks straight ahead, rearing to go. Frank notices her stiff posture and places a hand on her shoulder, chuckling.

“Easy there,” he says gently as he pats her back. “Don’t push yourself too hard. You’ll get there. Things take time.”

And as soon as he lets go, she’s off. A bit wobbly at first, the training wheels receiving more strain than they’re meant for as she makes slow, careful loops around the courtyard. After her third, surer loop, Frank goes and stands next to Karen, his arms crossed. She notices the way his fingers flinch every time Ellie wavers, looking like she might crash, before she rights herself and continues on, sometimes even faster than before.

“She’s too keen on playing with fire,” he muses quietly, and when she looks up she sees that he’s side-glancing at her, his eyes amused and warm. “Just like her mama.” 

Karen smiles and ducks her head, pushing her hair back from her forehead.

“There’s more to us Page women than meets the eye.”

Frank turns his head and presses his lips to her temple, causing her to close her eyes and let herself shiver against the warm feeling of his breath tickling her ear.

“No fucking kidding,” Frank murmurs against her skin.

When she opens her eyes again, Ellie’s completed another lap and has come to a skidded stop in front of them, eyes impossibly bright with a radiant grin plastered to her face.

“Mommy! Daddy! I got _so fast_!”

“You did, pumpkin,” Karen grins down at her.

When Ellie tries to stand up from the tricycle she trips a bit, too excited to pay attention to properly dismounting, but Frank’s with her in a flash, lifting her up from the seat.

“I got you,” he says as he holds her in his arms, looking at her like she’s the best thing he’s ever seen.

“I got you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all! Thanks so much for coming on this little adventure with us, this has been a joy to write (except when we were crying about it, but I digress) and it wouldn't have happened without all of your amazing encouragement! Thank you so much!
> 
> Much love,  
> Stellar and Ophiliad

**Author's Note:**

> trash tumblr: queensofthekastle.tumblr.com
> 
> also leave us comments because we want your thoughts! xx


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